Phoenix
by Imadra Blue
Summary: Darth Vader has a moment of self-reflection. Gen.


**Warnings:** Dark themes  
**Disclaimer:** Star Wars and all its characters are property of Lucasfilm Ltd. No copyright infringement is intended.  
**Notes:** Written for SW Mythology. Set five years after RotS. Second-person POV. Beta read by the wise Dilly.

--

You haven't looked at yourself in a mirror in years.

You head towards your hyperbaric chamber today, your stride quickening in eagerness. A sort of morbid curiosity possesses you to wonder what you look like now. Perhaps it's the fearful expressions on the Imperial officers' faces or the satisfaction of having found and destroyed another renegade Jedi. Perhaps it's because you've just left the infirmary, where the pinched-faced, pale-skinned doctor told you that you've healed from your injuries on Mustafar as much as possible. Or perhaps you just want to _know_.

The hyperbaric chamber opens before you with a soft hiss, its polished back surface not unlike your helmet. As you step in, the chamber closes, leaving you a tower of darkness amidst bright lights. White covers every surface, softening the edges, making the room seem larger on the inside than out. You rather like the paradox of being trapped in a white room, stained red by the occulars of your mask.

The mirror is covered with film. You had no use for it before, but today, your syntheleather gloved fingers trail along its edges and pull. Your sensation is dulled twice, once by the electrostatic pads on your fingers -- a mockery of touch that can never substitute flesh -- and twice by the gloves. You feel the resistance, but it is momentary. The plastisteel film tears like brittle paper, making a satisfactory ripping sound through your audio receptors. You look into a mirror for the first time in five years.

The sight before you is almost startling. Intellectually, you always knew how frightening you appeared with your mask on, but it's quite different to see the black death's head grinning at you, knowing _your_ face is behind there. There is no true expression on it; it is meant to evoke feeling in others, not display your own. People feel terror at the black eyes, at the unknown, at what lies behind the fearsome visage. As they should, for you are a terrifying man.

The moment the air rushes in, pure and filtered, you fumble at the release buttons just under your helmet. With a soft pop, you pull off the polished back dome, feeling a little lighter, but also a little smaller. You reach back, fingers digging for purchase, pulling off the coverings, then the mask. You don't look into the mirror until it is done, until you can feel the cold air upon your naked skin, until everything is _white_ with no traces of red.

You see yourself with your own eyes, but you don't recognize yourself. The first emotion you feel is a shock that freezes you where you stand, staring at the reflective glass. Is that you? That white-faced man with horrible scars and sagging skin? Are those your malevolent yellow eyes glaring back at you? You don't believe it at first. It doesn't seem real.

You pull off the syntheleather gloves, tossing them onto the flat white block your rest on, beside your helmet and mask. The black is startling against the white; the air is so clean it stings your flesh with astringents. You stare at that helmet, at your mask, and reach up to your naked scalp with bare durasteel fingers. Your electrostatic-tipped fingers confirm what your eyes already told you.

That is your face. Those scars are yours. That bald scalp is yours. That soft, pasty skin is yours. Even those wicked yellow eyes are yours. The cold you thought was in the air, you realize, is not from the air at all. It is _you_ who exudes the chill, the dark side so powerful inside of you that your skin can no longer contain it.

The second feeling you have is _rage_. It boils up inside of you, beginning in your belly, then bubbling out with a howl that likely makes every living creature on the _Death Star_ pause in fear. It courses through you like a poison, tearing through your insides, making your eyes sting. You can't cry anymore -- your tear ducts were destroyed in the fire -- but you know your fury would be fueling angry tears if it hadn't.

You think of Obi-Wan, of your old Master. You possess an all-encompassing desire to find him, the bastard, and tear his eyes out. You want to claw at his soft, handsome face with your durasteel fingers and visit every scar he gave you upon him. You want to beat him into a wall, to rip his cold heart out and squeeze it in front of those pretty blue-gray eyes of his. You want to cover him in ship fuel and light a torch, watch him burn on a funeral pyre like Qui-Gon, only you want him alive and _writhing_ with agony. You want him to _scream your new name_ before he dies like the wretch he is.

You turn to the mirror again, expression contorted in horror. Before you can even think better of it, you punch the mirror, shattering it as your boyhood dreams were shattered, the crack of breaking glass filling your ears as the sharp fragments fall across the floor. This is _Obi-Wan's_ fault. He took everything from you. What was once beautiful is now horrifying. What was strong, now weak. Gone is your golden hair and bronzed skin, replaced by dark scars on chalk-white skin. Gone is the firmness of carefully sculpted muscle, replaced by cold, hard durasteel. You look like a gray corpse, swathed in black. Obi-Wan _killed_ everything good inside you, and you will one day make him regret that.

Just as you regret killing _her_.

But no, you will not think of _her_. You promised yourself when you learned of her fate that her name would never escape your lips again. You push all thoughts of her aside. She is gone. Part of a dead man's life, just like Obi-Wan. She has already suffered for her betrayal, but Obi-Wan has yet to meet the justice he so desperately deserves. Soon, vengeance will be served, and it will be served cold. As cold as the dark side pulsing beneath your ruined flesh.

You brace your durasteel hands on the wall and close your eyes. You spend a moment reminding yourself to breathe, the hiss of your respirator the only sound in the chamber. You are not Anakin Skywalker. His life, his love, his passion, his beauty -- they have no meaning to you anymore. What was in the mirror was your false face. There, lying on the white block by your gloves is your real face: the polished death's head mask with no emotion. That is who you are now.

When you open your eyes, you catch a glimpse of your right eye in one of the broken pieces of glass at your feet and smile. The third and last emotion you feel is _satisfaction_. Perhaps, in some way, you owe Obi-Wan for turning you into this. You're an efficient killing machine now -- a Sith Lord, a dark knight, an avatar of justice and security for the Empire. Your false face can't inspire anything but a sense of revulsion now; there is no sense in mourning its appearance. It is a sign of an old weakness, a reminder of who you aren't. Everything Anakin lived for is dead or will be dead.

The syntheleather gloves slip on easily; they slide so nicely over metal, so much easier than sweat-sticky skin. With quick, neat motions of your hands, you place your mask and coverings back on, the room safely turning red at the edges again. When the helmet snaps into place, you feel like yourself again. Heavy. Powerful. Formidable. You stare down at the floor, at the shattered pieces of the mirror. Glimpses of your polished black mask glitter up at you, and emotion flees as quickly as it had come. You feel nothing now, but you can make others feel anything you desire.

You leave to find that white-clad, sallow-faced doctor who told you had "healed" and choke the life out of him. You were never injured in the first place -- not really.

You were reborn like a firebird of ancient legend on the blackened shores of Mustafar. You rose, gray, from your own ashes.

_End._


End file.
